Seminar 9 - March 25, 2021: Measurement of Women's Empowerment
Measurement of Women's Empowerment, by Prof. Ushma Upadhyay (UCSF)
We will continue our series of lectures on women's empowerment, today focusing on the opportunities and challenges of measuring women's empowerment in a meaningful way.
Readings and Reading Questions
Richardson, R. A. (2018). Measuring women’s empowerment: A critical review of current practices and recommendations for researchers. Social Indicators Research, 137(2), 539-557.
What does the author mean by “Empowerment is Contextual?” What are the implications of this statement for the ability to compare empowerment across countries?
Richardson argues that using direct measures of empowerment is preferable to indirect measures. What are some examples of direct and indirect measures of empowerment?
Richardson suggests that to understand women’s empowerment we should collect information from men. What are some of the advantages and disadvantages of such an approach?
Upadhyay, U. D., Danza, P. Y., Neilands, T. B., Gipson, J. D., Brindis, C. D., Hindin, M. J., ... & Dworkin, S. L. (2021). Development and validation of the sexual and reproductive empowerment scale for adolescents and young adults. Journal of Adolescent Health, 68(1), 86-94.
What are the different considerations for measuring empowerment among adolescents and young adults vs. adults?
What are your thoughts about using indicators related to sexual pleasure as an aspect of empowerment?
Reviewing the attached list of items, how easy or difficult do you think it would be for young people in Kisumu ages 15 to 24 to answer.
Upadhyay, U. D., Gipson, J. D., Withers, M., Lewis, S., Ciaraldi, E. J., Fraser, A., ... & Prata, N. (2014). Women's empowerment and fertility: a review of the literature. Social science & medicine, 115, 111-120.
Looking at the list of women’s empowerment measures used in the reviewed articles listed in Table 1, which items resonated with you? Which ones surprised you?
Looking at figure 2, if we included all regions of the world, how many studies do you think we would find from North America and Europe?
We found only 2 studies looking at the association between women’s empowerment and abortion. Both were done in India. One of these found a positive association between women’s empowerment and abortion. How would you explain this association?
